


some people are just happier when they're miserable

by simpskywalker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Crack Treated Seriously, Episode: s03e09 Hunt for Ziro, F/M, Heartbreak, Revenge, this is simultaneously the best and worst thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27050413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simpskywalker/pseuds/simpskywalker
Summary: Sy Snootles has never known heartbreak. In fact, she doesn’t even have a heart—Pa’lowickians merely have a fluid sack in the place where the organ should be.Or, the tale of how Sy Snootles found a heart, got it broken, and murdered her lover.
Relationships: Sy Snootles/Ziro the Hutt
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25





	some people are just happier when they're miserable

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been rewatching Clone Wars with a friend, and one line in the absolutely ridiculous "Hunt for Ziro" episode caught my attention: how Ziro says she means it from the bottom of her fluid sack, instead of from the bottom of her heart. I proceeded to think about it way too much and created this poetic monstrosity.
> 
> The title quote comes from the episode.
> 
> Thanks to the New SW Canon discord for being wonderful enablers, as always <3 Enjoy!

Sy Snootles has never known heartbreak. In fact, she doesn’t even have a heart—Pa’lowickians merely have a fluid sack in the place where the organ should be. Her whole species is a scientific anomaly, and she stays alive despite what every doctor says from Nal Hutta to Coruscant says should be possible.

She knows nothing of heartburn, of heartstrings, of heartsickness. Of tender hearts, of lion’s hearts, of broken hearts, of _love_.

It’s quite convenient, really. She can sing and dance and flirt in clubs all night long without worrying about getting attached or catching any—she shudders just to think of the word— _feelings_. She’s perfectly fine walking through the galaxy in silence without the pesky metronome of a heart. She’ll spend a night with someone if they look like they can stroke her snout in just the right way, but it’s never anything more than just a quick affair before Sy slips away at dawn.

At least, that was before Sy met Ziro.

It starts out like all of her other one-night-stands. Sy’s crooning out a bawdy melody in one of the seedier clubs on the lower levels of Coruscant when _he_ slithers into the room. Time freezes for a moment when she notices Ziro the Hutt, whose criminal exploits she’s heard awed whispers about but who she’s never seen in person. Her gaze rakes up and down his body, and she inexplicably wishes to be wrapped up inside his beautiful lavender curves. Ziro turns around and all of a sudden his gleaming emerald eyes meet hers. The eye contact breaks Sy out of her trance, and she continues singing with only a slight waver in her voice.

After her performance finishes, Sy weaves her way through the crowd to the bar, where she slaps down a handful of credits down on the counter and doesn’t even have to ask for her usual Twi’leki liquor. She makes some small talk with her backup musicians, chattering away inanely like normal, but she still feels a bit off-kilter. Something about the world seems… louder, somehow.

Suddenly, there’s a heavy hand on her shoulder. Sy’s words trail off as she twists around to find Ziro standing only inches away from her. At such a close distance, she can see the enticing sheen of his skin, and yearns to trace every inch of his endless tattoos with her tongue. She is fully enchanted by the brilliance of his eyes, and her every muscle is frozen as her world narrows to herself and Ziro and their point of contact. Her shoulder tingles.

“I _loved_ your performance, it was truly magnificent. What’s your name, darling?” Ziro asks Sy in his distinct rasp, grinning especially wide, and _oh_ , there’s this insistent mysterious pounding in her ears.

She gulps. “The name’s Sy Snootles,” she says, adding a flirtatious wink a few seconds later. Sy cringes internally at her off timing, feeling like she’s forgotten all of her charms from the past seven years as a singer. The club around her fades to a dull roar as she can’t pay attention anything except the impossibly wide stretch of his lips.

“Well, would you like to dance with me, Sy?” Ziro says her name like a prayer, elongating the syllable like it’s a cloud of smoke, breathing it into the world all sultry and reverent. He says _Sy_ like she’s sacred, like she’s precious, like she’s _everything_.

The mysterious pounding only grows in volume, becoming undeniable. Sy has no idea how, but for the very first time, she hears the beating of a heart inside of her.

She takes Ziro’s hand and lets him lead her into the crowd and twirl her around. She loses herself amongst their perfectly synchronized movements and the newfound hurricane of her emotions.

The next morning, the sun rises, and yet Sy cannot motivate herself to leave the warmth of Ziro’s bed. She curls herself further into their embrace, and she wonders...

_Oh, is this what it feels like to fall in love?_

...

No matter how many doctors Sy spends a frankly exorbitant amount of credits to go see, none of them can tell her what had happened that night in the club. Her body had simply sprouted a heart out of nowhere, beating and pulsing and _loud_.

That’s the hardest part to get used to, the noise of it all. Sy still has her trusty old fluid sack, so her mysterious new heart has no purpose except to roar annoyingly when she’s just trying to exist in the world. At one point, she considers purchasing hearing aids, because she needs to be able to hear in order to sing and do her job. But that would involve telling Ziro of her predicament, and she doesn’t want to lose this newfound feeling of _home_ she feels whenever they’re together.

Ziro has never known Sy without her heart. He only knows the way her heart skips a beat when he drawls out her name. Sometimes, when they’re lying together at night, he’ll place his hand over Sy’s heart, falling asleep to the steady rhythm without knowing anything of the impossibility of it all.

He doesn’t _need_ to know. Still, anxiety eats away at the back of Sy’s mind. If her heart appeared out of nowhere, couldn’t it disappear just as quickly? Sy clings onto every second of peace she gets with Ziro, and she can’t help but wonder what will happen when everything comes crashing down on her. Would he leave her all alone, when he discovers she is no longer the Sy he once loved?

She never gets to find out what he would do.

“I’m sorry, you need me to do _what?_ ”

Her heart stops, standing at the threshold of their— _no, his_ , she thinks, and in the distance she hears something _shatter_ —apartment. She gazes into Ziro’s forlorn expression, his eyes as mesmerizing as always, even in this moment of betrayal.

“Snooty, baby, you can’t stay here anymore. You need to leave Coruscant _now_. I can’t promise what will happen to you if you don’t.”

She snatches her belongings out of his arms, and sneers at him in place of saying the million embarrassing pleas begging to tumble off of her lips. “Oh, so you don’t love me anymore, and now you’re kicking me to the curb? Is that was this is?” After the words leave her mouth, she has a moment of horrible realization that Ziro has never actually _told_ her he loved her. Sy has simply foolishly assumed. She hears another faint _crack_ , and realizes, _oh, is this what heartbreak feels like?_

“It’s not that I don’t love you anymore, I swear, dear one—”

Sy doesn’t wait around to listen to him anymore. She spins around and hitches the first ship to Nal Hutta, all the while nursing her broken heart and tending to a growing ember of hatred at its core.

…

Life would really be so much easier for Sy if her heart had simply vanished on that fated day on Coruscant. Alas, her heart continues beating its erratic symphony. It still rests impossibly in her chest despite it all, broken into dagger-like shards. On the worst days, she wishes she could reach inside her body and impale Ziro with the remains of what he did to her.

Sy is alone for the first time in months, with nobody except the company of her pulsing heart which refuses to quiet down, sometimes crescendoing loud enough that she can hear nothing else.

One evening not long after the heartbreak, Sy sits at the bar after a typical performance, sipping a drink as her heart grows louder until it becomes unbearable. “Shut up!” she hisses, and a few other patrons give her strange looks before shifting away slowly.

At least all the anger she can still brew in her heart makes her a better bounty hunter. With every breath she takes, she takes the slight twang of pain and folds it into the inferno of her chest.

Perhaps it would be better if Sy let the pain fade away over time, but she’s found a new purpose in her side job with the Hutt cartels. One day, she’ll get her revenge, and it will all have been worth it, she tells herself. One day…

Sy can hardly contain her glee when she receives her newest assignment from Jabba. When she arrives at Ziro’s cell and spots his gorgeous figure for the first time in years, she forces herself to not shoot him immediately. Instead, she plasters on her flirtiest expression, and desperately tries to mimic the long-forgotten intonation of her love.

Luckily, Ziro’s too busy ogling her and babbling excuses about their separation and Jabba to notice the mere spectre of her adoration.

“As hard as it is to confess this to you, Snooty, I'm not a perfect Hutt,” Ziro says in earnest, and Sy has never wanted to burst into laughter more than she does at this moment. _Not a perfect Hutt? You’re the most rotten of them all,_ she thinks, tucking away the anger for later. The only thing keeping her going is the tantalizing promise of vengeance.

Sy widened her eyes, trying to give the most lovesick gaze ever. “I don't care what you've done or why they want to hurt you. I only care about us being together, forever,” she lies, and she knows she’s succeeded when Ziro’s grin stretches across his entire face.

“You… you really mean that?”

“From the bottom of my fluid sack,” Sy says, and this time it isn’t a lie. Her fluid sack is meaningless to her; it pales in comparison to her heart’s unholy power of love and destruction.

When she leans in to kiss her former lover through the bars, she turns off her brain and appreciates Ziro’s luscious lips for the very last time.

Once upon a time, she loved Ziro from the bottom of her heart. But Sy doesn’t believe in fairytales anymore. She will only ever love Ziro from the bottom of her fluid sack, at the very least loving him for granting her the deadliest weapon of them all.

Sy can barely pay attention on the trip to Teth and during their visit with Ziro’s mama. The moment grows closer and closer, and she can almost taste her future vindication.

They stand at Ziro’s papa’s grave, and even as Ziro rambles on about the real objective of Sy’s mission, the only thing she can think about is a vision of Ziro’s dead body in the same position.

“Some people are just happier when they're miserable,” Ziro says, and once again Sy has to stop herself from cackling at the irony.

Finally, _finally_ , the moment comes, and she relishes in Ziro’s shocked stuttering as she whips out her blaster and points it at him.

“B-but… What about Solarine? The sunsets? You and me sharing a future?” Ziro pleads. A long-dead part of Sy’s heart attempts to flutter at the memories of the long nights they spent, planning out the perfect future that never came to be.

 _No_ , Sy thinks as she crushes the tender emotion into further fragmented pieces. She can’t afford to hesitate, not now, when she’s about to get everything she’s ever wished for. Her heart screams in her chest, the loudest it’s ever been, and she almost can’t hear her meticulous-planned words over its thunderous beating.

“Next time, you'll think twice about breaking someone's heart. Oh, wait. There won't be a next time,” she spits out before firing twice.

Ziro topples to the ground with a shout. All of a sudden, for the first time in years, the world goes silent.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [make my heart beat like the rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27549460) by [simpskywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simpskywalker/pseuds/simpskywalker)




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